Primary Source Websites

This is not a primary source website, but American Heritage contains articles written by historians. Use the notes at the end of the articles to find primary sources related to your topic. Search the archives of American Heritage magazine to locate high-quality secondary source material.

The University of California's gateway to primary sources. More than 150,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts — reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history.

Chronicling America is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP)This site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1880-1922 and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.. Currently, the site contains selected newspapers from California (The San Francisco Call, Sacramento Record-Union), District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Kentucky, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Virginia and Washington.

The Library of Congress is home to many of the most important documents in American history. This Web site provides links to materials digitized from the collections of the Library of Congress. For each item on these lists there is a page with background information about the document, and a list of links to digital materials concerning that document.

The EADA is a collection of electronic texts and links to texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820. Published by by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities.

The Foreign Relations of the United States series is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. The series is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian and printed volumes and archived at the University of Wisconsin.

Headquartered at the New York Historical Society, this collection contains more than 60,000 documents detailing the political and social history of the United States. The collection's holdings include manuscript letters, diaries, maps, photographs, printed books and pamphlets ranging from 1493 through modern times.

Making of America
The University of Michigan's digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of: psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science & technology.

Online Archive of California (OAC)
Contains detailed descriptions of primary source collections maintained by more than 150 institutions such as libraries, historical societies, and museums, including collections maintained by the 10 University of California (UC) campuses.

Primary Documents in American History
The Library of Congress is home to many of the most important documents in American history. This web site provides links to materials digitized from the collections of the Library of Congress.

Teaching American History Document Library
Contains letters, speeches, documents, books, and articles on significant people and events in American political thought and history. Rather than being a comprehensive list of available resources, it is meant to be a list of the best resources available on the given subject.

Worcester Women's History Project
This online historical library of primary source material is published by the Worcester Women's History Project, which was set up to promote research into women's history.

World War I Document Archive
This site includes the full text of dozens of World War One-related documets. These include treaties, speeches and diaries. There are also extensive collections of texts pertaining to the War at Sea and to World War 1 medicine.